The Bitcoin is looking more and more like traditional money every day. In just a few short years, the upstart digital currency has gone from a mere novelty to a multimillion dollar trading commodity subject to many of the ills that plague “real” money backed by...
The Bitcoin Bounces Back
After a rough couple of years, the Bitcoin is surging back with a vengeance. Just a year after its fall from grace in the Silk Road drug site scandal, the digital currency’s market value has even beaten gold in the world’s markets. Whether hailed as a welcome...
Drug Lord or Hero: The Silk Road’s Founder Confounds Expectations
The Silk Road is dead. That eclectic online marketplace for trafficking in illegal substances of every kind was raided and shut down in 2013 by the FBI and other federal agencies, who confiscated its multimillion dollar store of Bit coin. But its mysterious founder,...
A Cash Free Society? Sweden Leads the Way
Hard metal in the hand or virtual numbers on a card, money is what people agree that it is. And now, as Sweden moves quietly toward a cash-free society, the very nature of money – and what it means – could be forever changed. Sweden has long been in the vanguard of...
The MintChip: Mainstream Banking Tries to Get Digital
It sounds like a new kind of snack: the MintChip. But this product of the Royal Canadian Mint represents a new stage in the evolution of digital currency: digital money created and controlled by a state bank. And its demise in April 2014 serves as a cautionary tale...
What’s In Your (Dark) Wallet?
The Bitcoin is making more and more strides toward worldwide acceptance—and that’s fueling increased efforts to regulate use of the new digital currency. But Bitcoin supporters who embrace the freedom and anonymity of the Bitcoin and other monies like it are fighting...
Exchange CEO’s Suicide Adds to Bitcoin Turmoil
The Bitcoin, pioneer of the digital currency movement worldwide and once the darling of liberty lovers everywhere, has suffered some major setbacks in its march toward acceptance as a real alternative currency. But whether – and how – the Bitcoin weathers those rough...
Digital Currency Scams Hit the Internet
If a new financial trend woos consumers, can scam artists be far behind? As the Bitcoin and other digital currencies are alternately hailed as striking a blow for financial independence, or a tool for cybercrime and corruption, new scams are popping up that highjack...
Can The World Have Too Many Currencies?
While the Bitcoin continues to grab headlines for reasons good and bad, other digital currencies are quietly staking their own claim in the international money markets. As it’s becoming clear that virtually anybody can put a digital money system in place, economists...
Is Digital Currency Real Money?
Banned by governments, implicated in drug market money laundering and welcomed worldwide to buy big and small ticket items, the Bitcoin is paving the way for new ways to by and sell that are far removed from the traditional models of money. But the jury’s still out on...